Alton Logan's Buried Affidavit Innocence
On January 11, 1982, security guard Lloyd Wickliffe was shot and killed during a robbery at a McDonald's in Chicago, and courts later convicted Alton Logan of the murder, sentencing him to life in prison. Around the same time, another man, Andrew Wilson, already on trial for killing two police officers, privately confessed to his lawyers that he had actually committed the McDonald's murder.
Bound by attorney-client privilege, defense attorneys swore out an affidavit naming Wilson as the real killer, locked it away in a metal box, and agreed it could be opened only after Wilson's death. The document stayed hidden for about 26 years, until Wilson died in 2007; when the lawyers finally revealed his confession, a judge vacated Logan's conviction, and he was formally declared innocent after spending more than two decades behind bars.